Fun with fungi

Sunday, October 14, 2018

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM

Spiegel & Grau, Penguin Randomhouse in US will publish the American edition of “The Way Through the Woods” next summer. The editor, Mengfei Chen says:“From the first sentence, I was struck by Woon’s irresistible voice. She is a natural storyteller, and The Way Through the Woods is a unique and thoroughly fascinating exploration of the connections between nature, grief, and healing. I couldn’t be more pleased to be working with Woon on bringing this gem of a book to the American reader.”

Long Litt Woon’s “The Way Through the Woods” is starting to be launched abroad: First out is Finnish in August, Danish, Dutch and Swedish in September, French in October, Spanish and Catalan in November this autumn. English (UK and US), German, Italian, Japanese and Polish next year. Congratulations and thanks to all dedicated, hardworking and enthusiastic publishers and translators and Woon Long!

Monday, August 28, 2017

“It felt as if someone had slammed me with a huge sledgehammer…. Just a
few hours ago we were a married couple …..Now Eiolf was at the Emergency Ward
at Ullevål Hospital. Dead and cold.”

This is a story about
a journey that started the day the author’s life fell apart. While in the depths
of a life-draining grief, she stumbles upon the wondrous world of mushrooms. In
the process, she befriends the Mushroom Pickers, a tribe with their own rites
of passage and unspoken rules. As she
sets out on a voyage of discovery into the realm of fungi, she ventures along a
parallel journey through an inner landscape of pain and sorrow.

As Long takes the
reader through this simultaneously funny and heartbreaking story, her unusual, personal
quest soon feels familiar; at its underlying core the story is one of common
human experience. We are introduced to mushrooms not only as food or poison,
but also their natural history and cultural significance. In the book, the
author unveils how the combination of mushrooms and grief triggers fundamental
changes in her life by creating new meaning and identity.

Told in a clear and
strong narrative voice, the author’s enthusiasm for mushrooms is particularly
charming and is also likely to be contagious.

Long Litt Woon (The surname is Long, born in 1958 in
Malaysia) is an Anthropologist and certified Mushroom Expert in Norway. In
her youth, she traveled to Norway as an exchange student. There she met and
married Eiolf Olsen, a Norwegian, and made Norway her home. Long Litt Woon
currently lives in Oslo.

Testimonial:

“This is one of the most surprising and original books I have read in a
long time – so much to learn and reflect about the human condition and about a
natural phenomenon.”

Dear Facebook friends, I have written a non-fiction book (currently only in Norwegian) due to be published this autumn. It is about two journeys, an external one to the wondrous Kingdom of Fungi and an internal one in the landscape of grief. I have made a FB-page (in Norwegian) about it and am trying to learn how to create a social media buzz as I go along. All ideas are welcome. Want to get an invite to the launch in Oslo, Norway? Please like and share the link. Stay tuned. Stay cool:)

I was fortunate to attend the meeting at Fornos de Algodres in Portugal (8-13.11.2015), a fest for fungiphiles. The weather prior to the meeting ensured that mushrooms were everywhere we looked ....and did not look.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Edible
Compared to False Saffron Milkcap (grows in spruce forests), the Saffron Milkcap is larger and firmer.
The spot-like depressions in the stem of the Saffron Milkcap also differentiate it from its false cousin.